Consulting Firm Reviews Auto Industry Outlook

The following is a perspective from Booz & Co., a leading global consulting firm, offering the company’s latest thinking on key insights, trends and the forecast for the year ahead in the auto industry, In some cases, the observations parallel the RV industry.

For U.S. automakers and suppliers, the past year can best be described as 12 months of mixed results, leaving unanswered questions about the future direction of the industry and what is required for manufacturers and suppliers to thrive.

In 2011, U.S. light car and truck sales will exceed 12.5 million, a nice bump from 11.6 million in 2010 and 10.4 million in 2009. And though the most optimistic analysts forecast that U.S. vehicle sales will rise to more than 14 million in 2012, that’s a far cry from 17.3 million at the turn of the millennium. Last year’s U.S. sales figures might have been higher if not for the tsunami and earthquake in Japan and flooding in Thailand, which forced Toyota, Honda, and, to a lesser extent, Nissan to curtail production in virtually all of their assembly plants around the world. Auto sales growth is far more rapid in emerging nations such as China and India, with average annual sales gains since 2001 of 23% and 15% respectively.

All of this should be good news for U.S. automakers, which have restructured their operations to be profitable at lower volumes in the U.S. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler gained market share at the expense of the Japanese manufacturers, and the Detroit Three have now posted several quarters of consistently strong operating performance. Whether these improved earnings are short-lived will depend on a number of unknowns:

• As their output returns to normal, will Japanese companies reclaim their market share?

• Will the Detroit Three maintain their focus on new vehicle development and launches and continue to practice pricing discipline, which favors maximizing profits over volume or marketshare growth?

• How will rapid introductions to the U.S. market of highly competitive new models from automakers around the globe, combined with slow growth, play out? How will automakers differentiate their vehicles and earn the pricing and volume they need? What will they do to ensure that each program delivers an attractive return on invested capital?

• How will automakers serving the U.S. market protect themselves against the risk of disruption (such as the supply chain disruptions we have seen in Japan and Thailand) and will they do it at an affordable cost?

Automakers will also face technological challenges. For example, advances in braking, parking assistance, propulsion, sensors, and other critical areas are bringing us closer and closer to the era of self-driving automobiles; indeed, Google has already logged well over 100,000 miles on its unmanned robotic vehicle. In urban areas, in particular, these innovations could improve traffic flow, provide revenues (through “smart tags” and traffic congestion pricing), and reduce accidents through vehicle-to-vehicle communication and coordination.

Meanwhile, vehicle-based mobile communications technology continues to produce breakthroughs in voice-activated telephony, GPS, information, and entertainment. For example, GM customers can now use the automaker’s OnStar (driver communication) and RelayRides (vehicle location tracking) systems to rent their personal vehicles to others and charge fees based on usage. Both original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers will have to anticipate which new technologies and add-on services will justify the cost of innovation. Clearly, anything that consumers are willing to pay for, that increases safety or functionality, or that reduces cost has the potential to be successful. At the same time, OEMs must be careful to integrate new technology into vehicles effectively and only when it is well perfected, or risk adding features that are annoying or, worse yet, prone to breaking down, which could negatively affect consumer perceptions about the quality of the automaker’s products.

A return to competition based on innovation is a refreshing change from the dismal situation the industry faced just two years ago. And while the Detroit Three focus on producing more exciting and attractive vehicles, they can take comfort in having addressed a perennially problematic issue through a new and mutually beneficial four-year labor agreement with the United Auto Workers. By being able to pay newly hired workers at rates comparable to those paid by Asian transplants in the U.S., GM, Ford, and Chrysler have taken another important step in narrowing the gap with their rivals on manufacturing costs.

Suppliers are also relatively well positioned after several difficult years. Many suppliers were very profitable in 2011; they have emerged from the recession (and, in many cases, Chapter 11) with restructured balance sheets and lowered breakeven points. Moreover, supplier relationships with GM, Ford, and Chrysler have improved, according to the annual Planning Perspectives OEM-Supplier Working Relations Index. But there is more work to do: Chrysler and GM still score in the “very poor-poor” range.

There are some dark clouds for suppliers, though. Raw material prices, already elevated, may continue to rise, and many suppliers are struggling to find the capital to ramp up production to meet increasing demand. Moreover, most suppliers must continue to deal with what has become an endemic issue: a talent shortage, as top-flight engineers willing to work in the auto industry are increasingly hard to find.